JLarson's build thread

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by JARblue

What the hell? You provide nice, detailed updates when you're doing all the work yourself. Now you have a bunch of guys doing all the work for you and you post up some weak a$$ update like that?

At least post up some pictures of the work in the shower

Why do you want those pictures so bad? So that you can go and hamsterbate to them?

[Rusty]

I had a good weekend at JL's place. I learned a few things. Just wish the Z was running when I left to come home.

[JLarson]

Originally Posted by Rusty

Why do you want those pictures so bad? So that you can go and hamsterbate to them?

He calls it "hamster jacking". It's all the rage with his people - you know, furries.

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by JLarson

He calls it "hamster jacking". It's all the rage with his people - you know, furries.

[JLarson]

Saturday we accomplished a lot of the grunt work. OldGrayDog and my dad swung by to help or hang out.

-Filter was installed in place. Thanks to JC for the helpful tip of putting it in place PRIOR to trying to install the turbo. That was critical.
-Turbo was installed. Expect this to take some time, especially your first shot. You've got to push it up in place, orient the water coolant lines and feed them up through through the engine bay to hopefully where a friend (Madwi in this case) is waiting to grab them.
-Upper plenum reinstalled along with throttle bodies.
-Intercooler/charge piping installed. This is awful if you have a CMAK. Flat out my least favorite part of this job. Definitely windex your couplers to make adjustment easier. You may need to re-orient your clutch line - this is not documented in the instructions. You will probably need to remove a bolt from your lower engine mount and reverse it to gain a precious 3/4s of an inch of space to orient Frank (the frankenstein pipe) to work around the CMAK. If you do this early, you will save many hours and a lot of frustration. I did not do this early.
-A lot of smaller work accomplished - running BOV's, getting those in place, prepping for exhaust piping.

[JLarson]

Sunday was final touches.
-Fast Intentions crash bar installed. Complications here, again because of the brackets. Did get it in place.
-Ports on BOV's blocked off per instructions.
-Exhaust installed.
-Waste gate lines shielded and run over top of the trans.
-Did a once over on whole system, tightening everything down, making sure everything was in place.
-Start up. Not glorious. Car starts, runs rough for a moment and dies.

****.

[JLarson]

Troubleshooting so far:

-Loaded in rough tune from RT Tuning using EcuTek.
-Fuel pump turns on. We can hear it in the tank, and using EcuTek + my bluetooth module, we can start it and keep it running.
-Removed upper plenum, checked fuel rail. Fuel rail is definitely pressurizing (shot Madwi in the face when disconnected).
-Injectors appear to be correctly seated. Rail seats snugly, with no evidence it's pushing up anywhere.
-Reconnected everything. Still rough start, idles horribly, and dies.
-MAF sensor port appears to be incorrect. Rusty had noticed during install of passenger MAF that it appeared Treadstone had welded the MAF port off center from the pipe cut out. This was hand filed to allow MAF to install correctly. MAF does not appear to seal in slot - seal does not fit. Used silicon around the large gap just to rule it out. Car still does not start correctly.
-Rechecked all post-MAF connections. Nothing easily identified as a vacuum leak. Nothing obvious missing or disconnected.
-EcuTek detects no codes. AFR gauge is maxing out (showing 18:1, highest it can display). Maybe injectors?

More on this later. Cancelled my scheduled tune tomorrow till I can figure this out.

Huge thanks to both Madwi and Rusty for coming out, working with me on a huge project! They were both amazing! I learned a lot from them (and have some new tools to purchase on my list).

Edit: Insult to injury - my Quickjack is locked in the air. I cannot reconnect my quick connect fittings so I'll have to call them later today to find out how to handle this.